Buck, our Honda Element, wouldn’t start one day last week so I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed a few tools, and got my hands greasy. A few minutes later he was purring in the drive, so I came in, put things away, washed my hands, and touched up my eye liner.

See what I did there? Blurred those boundaries. I worked on the car, which was a brawny thing to do, and then fixed my face, which is a typically feminal thing to do. Which incidentally, I’ve been doing all my life, but I’m just now getting comfortable with the fact that I am all over the place when it comes to masculinity and femininity.

When I was a little kid playing with my older sister, we played mostly girly things like house and Barbies and made paper dolls, which all suited me just fine. My mom taught me to cook and sew. I enjoyed those things. I also had Hot Wheels and GI Joes and a big sand pile. I had the luxury of access to my dad’s work bench and tools, where I would build and deconstruct things to my heart’s content, and I eventually learned to maintain my own minibike. And I enjoyed those things. (more…)

Grey Forge LeFey

www.grandbohemia.com